The bell fails to toll for this prosaic biopic

I Heard the Bells (PG, 110 mins) Directed by Joshua Enck Reviewed by James Croot ★★

Five years ago it was the creator of A Christmas Carol getting the festive biopic treatment, this time it’s the author of 1863 poem-turned-hymn I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. Both stories focus on a once-feted writer who has fallen on hard times and is struggling for inspiration.

Bharat Nalluri’s The Man Who Invented Christmas’ detailing of the backstory that led Charles Dickens to write his 1843 classic was genuinely heartfelt and brilliantly cast.

This, however, has TV-movie production values (it feels like a throwback to the Christmas-morning movies of the 1980s and 90s), ponderous pacing and seemingly a faith-based agenda to peddle.

Bookended by quotes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow himself, I Heard the Bells details America’s then-greatest poet’s ‘‘secret sorrows’’ which left him ‘‘sad’’ rather than ‘‘cold’’, as he was sometimes publicly perceived.

With 1860 coming to an end and civil war seemingly looming, Longfellow (Stephen Atherholt) is constantly assailed with requests for words of comfort or uplift.

After all, he is the man whose works like The Song of Hiawatha and Paul Revere’s Ride had helped shape the national character and whose London sales frightened Dickens more than any ghosts – past or present.

However, Longfellow is the one still haunted by past actions and demons, and when tragedy robs him of his beloved second wife Fanny (Rachel Day Hughes), he vows never to write again.

Withdrawing from public life and engagement with his own children, Longfellow further despairs when his oldest son Charley (Jonathan Blair) defies him and enlists for the now ignited internal conflict.

When the next moment of crisis comes though, Longfellow will need to break out of his torpor if he is to prevent more tragedy and find a path back to his family.

The little-known Atherholt and, in particular, Hughes do their best to make this period drama emotive and compelling but they are saddled with a lumpen, leaden script and, in Atherholt’s case, some rather distracting facial fungus.

Longfellow’s melancholy is perfectly understandable, but the film seems to wallow in it.

The lack of action is replaced by pontificating and poetry-spouting, punctuated by a tinkly piano score, none of which truly threatens the tear ducts in the way the filmmakers (whose last outing was 2019’s Noah the Musical) might have hoped.

I Heard the Bells is screening now in select cinemas.